Friday, December 25

The Weekly Shtikle - Vayechi

Once again, a Weekly Shtikle mazal tov to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Aharon and Rachelle Yeres on the birth of their son who was named at his bris yesterday – Yisroel Aryeh, after his great grandfather on whose yahrtzeit he was born. Mazal Tov to the extended Yeres, Frankel and Stark extended families.

Skipping across the 878, a Weekly Shtikle mazal tov to my cousins, the Moshens of Far Rockaway on the birth of a baby boy – to the parents, the grandparents and great grandmother, Oma Jakobovits.

An oldie but a goodie, also relevant to Sotah 36a which was recently passed by the daf yomi cycle:

The following is a story told to me by a friend that directly pertains to this week's parsha. He heard it in a schmooze from R' Aharon Kahn in YU. R' Kahn tells that one day his rebbe approached him, grabbed by the lapels and exclaimed, "It's refraction!" (For an explanation of refraction, see below.*)

"What is? What is?" he answered.

"Refraction," he repeated.

"What? What's refraction?"

The following was his explanation: Rashi explains (48:16) that the word veyidgu comes from the same root as the word dag, meaning fish. The blessing given to Efrayim and Menasheh is that they should multiply like the fish in the sea over which ayin hara, the evil eye, has no power. Why does the evil eye have no power over fish? The gemara (Sotah 36b) explains that the ayin hara has no power over fish because they are covered by water. The simple understanding could be that the water acts as a physical barrier to prevent the ayin hara. However, this rebbe explained that since fish are always in the water, when you look at them you are really not looking directly at the fish but rather, due to refraction, you are seeing some sort of distorted image of the fish and the image is somewhat shifted. Therefore, the evil eye has no power over them. Unbelievable!

*Refraction is the phenomenon that occurs when light passes through media of different densities. If the light passes through at an angle, the angle is slightly altered as it passes from one medium to the next, depending on their densities. This phenomenon is responsible for a pencil looking bent when half of it is inserted into water and is also the concept behind eye glasses.